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Nancy |
By Ralph Cipriano
for Bigtrial.net
The new owners of
The Philadelphia Inquirer may put out a boring newspaper, but they sure know how to stage an entertaining brawl.
Maybe it's time to outfit the new
Inky newsroom in the old Strawbridge building with TV cameras, and turn the battle over the city's comatose paper of record into a reality TV series.
Nancy Phillips and Lexie Norcross would look great on camera as the faces of the two rival ownership factions slugging it out every day in the newsroom. It would be far more interesting than having to read the paper of record.
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Lexie |
Meanwhile, in Common Pleas Court this morning, a couple of battling owners, Lewis Katz and H.F. "Gentleman Gerry" Lenfest, showed up to demonstrate their support for fired
Inky Editor Bill Marimow, who's hired his own lawyer because he's tired of getting "smeared" by the mudslinging.
George Norcross, the rival owner presumably behind the firing and alleged smearing of Marimow, let his lawyers do the talking, as he was nowhere in sight.
Who will win the slugfest? On one side, we have Katz, who made a fortune in parking, banking and billboards and used to own the New Jersey Nets, and his longtime companion, Nancy Phillips. She's a 40-something former investigative reporter who considers Marimow her mentor and is now the city editor of the
Inquirer. The joke around the
Inky newsroom
was that after Katz bought the paper, it was Nancy who hired Marimow as editor.
On the other side, it's George Norcross, the Democratic boss of South Jersey, and his daughter, Lexie. She's the 25-year-old VP of digital operations and corporate services who runs philly.com., the free website that prefers trashy stories about Miley Cyrus and Jenna Jameson to dull
Inky investigative stories and editorials. It's the Norcross faction that wants to put Marimow out to pasture. The former editor of the
Inquirer may be a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, but to the Norcross faction, he's a print dinosaur stuck in a 1970s tarpit.
One veteran political handicapper who knows all the players says his money's on Norcross, because he's the better in-fighter. "This is not his kind of battle," the handicapper said of Katz. "This is over pussy and bullshit, not money."